Recently I concluded a long-running Ars Magica game. In order to fill the gaming gap that left, I've started a series of unrelated one-shots called "Uncampaign." Which is designed around the exploration of novel indie games.

Which games should I try out as one-shots, and why? The only requirement is that a good sense of the game can be had from one or two sessions of play and that the game presents a new or interesting element differently than the mainstream (WoTC products, WoD products, gurps, etc...) games do.

Brian, this is a very broad question. Almost every indie game plays well in two sessions and presents something differently from the mainstream. Could we have some more details of what you or your players are interested in?
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GrahamJan 5 '11 at 15:21

Yeah ... play games that excite and interest you. Tell us what excites and interest you and may be we can point you toward games that map well to that. The idea of taking some time to explore a series of one-shots sounds fun.
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JmstarJan 5 '11 at 19:48

@Graham the trick is that I'm playing with a rotating group of players. One of my constant players is Gamist with the intention of solving clear goals or instigating when there are no clear goals. I like running exploration. Another one of my players is strongly character driven, with odd characters appealing to her. Rather, this question is more of a "What are the best of breed recent indie games that play well within a short time frame?"
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Brian Ballsun-Stanton♦Jan 5 '11 at 23:50

I wouldn't worry too much about strong play preferences among your friends for one-shots - if the step-on-up guy doesn't get exactly what he wants from game A, there's always next week, and he's learned that isn't his cup of tea. But there's always the chance that you'll both be surprised.
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JmstarJan 6 '11 at 13:26

7 Answers
7

Don't Rest Your Head
You're an exhausted insomniac and you're slowly going mad. Oh and something's going to eat you if you ever go to sleep.

3:16 - Carnage Amongst The Stars
You're a Space Marine charged with protecting the human race from all possible threats: the best way to do that is to visit every planet in the universe and kill anything and everything that moves.

Dead Inside
For some reason or another, your soul has been stolen, sold, or has rotted away. Now it's time to get it back, and you can do that in several different ways: Grow another, buy/steal someone else's, or eat ghosts.

RISUS
Oh dear lord, I don't know how to explain it. Google it and check it out.

Inspectres
You solve a mystery - but instead of the GM having a mystery and the players solving it, the GM plants "clues" and the players decide what they mean.

The Shotgun Diaries
You're one of six survivors in a zombie apocalypse. You're only really good at one thing. You're either Strong, Fast, Clever, Dangerous, Sneaky or Useless (Well. If you're useless you aren't good at anything.) If you're alone, you can only ever perform actions that fall under the single word that describes you (if you're the Fast survivor, all you can do is run). If you're not alone, you get dice from your teammates to help you not die.

Kobolds Ate My Baby
You're a fuzzy little Kobold with a mouth bigger than your head. You like to eat... well, anything really, but fresh babies are your favorite. You need to raid the nearby farm and steal some fresh babies for KING TORG (all hail King Torg!), the King of the Kobolds, and if you're lucky you might snag a snack for yourself. You'll battle chickens, cows and farmers on your quest, and hopefully not drink too much soda.

@Lo'oris: I agree, it's just hard to describe in a few lines!
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jeffszuszJan 24 '11 at 21:47

3:16 is better in a long campaign, where the ripetitivity of the situation finally brings the players to realize that doing war is something insane. For a short one-shot it's interesting but does not get to the point.
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ZachielSep 23 '12 at 13:52

Shock: Social Science Fiction - Shared world creation, shared GMing responsibilities, very aggressive scene framing, situations where what the player and his character want are different, mechanics structured around theme instead of physics, mechanics customized to your particular game session. Is quite good at generating the sorts of science fiction short stories you might get from Clarke or Asimov.

In a Wicked Age - Random world/character seeds (the oracles) as brainstorming/artificial constraints to help players stretch and try new things. Is quite good at generating Conan-esque short stories.

Fiasco - Random world/character seeds. Shared GMing responsibilities. Is reportedly quite good at generating "crimes gone very, very bad" stories like of the sorts seen in movies like Snatch and Fargo. Regrettably, I have not yet played.

Penny for My Thoughts - Shared storytelling game with heavy constraints. Game is played entirely in character. The rules themselves can be treated as an in-universe thing explaining to the patients the self-directed treatment. Borderline GM-less.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen - RPG game with very strong storytelling leanings as a bar game. Shows that you can have an identifiable and satisfying RPG with negligible mechanics. Borderline GM-less.

I'll second here with FATE recommendations, from things like Dresden Files for setting specific, or even a broader range with Spirit of the Century which I found great for pulp one-shots. Similarly on this pulp vibe, although using the Ubiquity system instead of FATE HEX is a great adventure into a more Verne-style pulp with a really simple system.

Moving away from the pulp section you can mix up the GMing style with Polaris, though it requires exactly four people. Branching out into the warmer climbs of political intrigue, and ideally if you're going to move on further from a one-shot you could give the author-ascribed anti-D&D a go with Houses of the Blooded. Or if you want to play around in your collective conscious I'd recommend you Don't Rest Your Head.

There are others which I could go into, and as a small list of good personal experiences:

+1 for Dogs in the Vineyard. I have to say though, I don't think Dresden Files makes a good one-shot. My DFRPG campaign just wrapped up its first "novel" and the system really supported our novel-length endeavors. Maybe I'm wrong. Spirit of the Century, on the other hand, was pretty much intended as a once-in-a-while game, and is great fun for that.
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gomadJan 19 '11 at 23:52

Keep in mind that Dogs really comes out after the first session, where the GM uses the actions taken by the players in the previous cities to press hard choices on the dogs.
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ZachielSep 23 '12 at 13:55

Once you've played Donjon, you might try 3:16RPGGeek, a game that has been on my radar lately because of its potential to create Starship Troopers-style games (from the novel, not the movie).

I've just gotten FiascoRPGGeek, and will actually probably be playing that this weekend. I have high hopes for the game and think it will be an even better game than Dirty SecretsRPGGeek. Both are GM-less games intended to create movie-like experiences.

Oh, and of course, there's OgRPGGeek. Og is a game of caveman hilarity. The game plays with a drastically constrained vocabulary and is the perfect remedy to months of super-serious roleplaying. Dammit, I may have to play Og this weekend instead of Fiasco.

@Jmstar - Tough luck for Og - I just found all the monthly playsets. I had better keep London 1593 a secret from my wife until we've played Dragon Slayers and Gangster London...
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gomadJan 7 '11 at 0:02

@Jmstar - Played Fiasco this weekend. We had a 3-player Boomtown setup. I think our RPG experience worked against us, as we were reluctant to really pull out all the stops in terms of how badly we were willing to harm each other and ourselves. Not that things went well, that's for sure. We all loved the Aftermath and everybody wants to play again. We'll be back to DFRPG for a while now, but I can tell that Fiasco has supplanted (the also awesome) Dirty Secrets for my group!
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gomadJan 19 '11 at 19:44

Our group has been wanting to do a one shot of Fiasco, which works fine as a one shot. We also want to run Blowback, the Burn Notice RPG, but it really requires a set of sessions of unfolding the meta threat. We did a one shot of Dresden Files, though I don't feel like the one shot format takes sufficient advantage of FATE to make it worth it.

To be precise, running Fiasco as anything other than a one-shot would require a major hack on the game-as-written.
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SevenSidedDieJan 6 '11 at 0:10

You can link individual sessions into related fiascoes, carrying one character or element from one to the next with related baggage. Some of the playsets (Southern town and suburbia) have some carry-over in available elements to facilitate this. But yeah, it's designed as a one-shot game.
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JmstarJan 6 '11 at 13:23

Savage Worlds: not really my favorite, but a lot of people like it and it's easy to pick up and give a shot. If you have the money/time it's an interesting game to test out.

Challenger RPG: this is my game, it's free in all formats across the net, and I'd love to hear what you think of it! If you have the time to check it out and let me know, that'd be great. It's somewhere near 13th revision now, so I'm hoping it's a 'little' better than when I started out. It was designed to run fast and loose with a bit of humor thrown in. There's even a section on quick advancement for 'trying out' the game in a couple sessions and advice on running one shots (as well as 60+ pages of universal GM advice, something I can never get enough of personally).

I hope you find some cool games before you start up another epic campaign!

While sadly out of business, if you can find a copy of Big Eye, Small Mouth I found it to be an excellent "different" RPG back in the day. It's different in the effect that it attempts to allow any setting you want, albeit with an anime flavor to it, and gives total character customization. Your setting doesn't have to be "anime" but the system gets it's ideas from it. My experience with the system comes from it's second edition but I heard they released a third before they went out.

The system is relatively different in the fact that you are given a certain amount of points to create your character with (there are no character classes). With these points you can buy different attributes to make a one of a kind character. Party memebers could be anything from a winged flying sorcerer to a mechanized ninja to your typical magical school girl. The system also only uses three stats (mind, body, soul if I remember correctly) to represent your character and requires only 2d6 to play.

The system is setup to be highly customizable while being fairly simple to play. Mechanics are fairly loose and at times leaves up a lot of stuff to the DM due to so many possibilities. It does have it's downsides. One, due to customizability there is some problems with power balancing in which one PC could end up being insanely powerful compared to others if you let people do it. Secondly, there is no inherent "level-up" system. You can award more points as characters level to accomplish this feeling if you want. Thirdly, the entire system is contained in one book and revolves around world and character creation. There is no "monster manual" for this setting, you will need to create your own monsters.

Some of the cons kind of set it up for an ideal one-shot scenario, so this may work in your favor =) I wouldn't run any serious on-going campaign with it now-a-days though.